1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the manufacture of very large scale integrated (VLSI) circuits and, more particularly, to the resolution enhancement of photolithographic images through the use of phase shifted masks. More specifically, a routine is provided to check a design for phase shiftability.
2. Description of the Related Art
A very large scale integrated (VLSI) complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) chip is manufactured on a silicon wafer by a sequence of material additions (i.e., low pressure chemical vapor depositions, sputtering operations, etc.), material removals (i.e., wet etches, reactive ion etches, etc.), and material modifications (i.e., oxidations, ion implants, etc.). These physical and chemical operations interact with the entire wafer. For example, if a wafer is placed into an acid bath, the entire surface of the wafer will be etched away. In order to build very small electrically active devices on the wafer, the impact of these operations has to be confined to small, well defined regions.
Lithography in the context of VLSI manufacturing of CMOS devices is the process of patterning openings in photosensitive polymers (sometimes referred to as photoresists or resists) which define small areas in which the silicon base material is modified by a specific operation in a sequence of processing steps. The manufacturing of CMOS chips involves the repeated patterning of photoresist, followed by an etch, implant, deposition, or other operation, and ending in the removal of the expended photoresist to make way for a new resist to be applied for another iteration of this process sequence.
The basic lithography system consists of a light source, a stencil or photomask containing the pattern to be transferred to the wafer, a collection of lenses, and a means for aligning existing patterns on the wafer with patterns on the mask. Since a wafer containing from fifty to one hundred chips is patterned in steps of one to four chips at a time, these lithography tools are commonly referred to as steppers. The resolution of an optical projection system such as a lithography stepper is limited by parameters described in Rayleigh's equation: EQU R=k.sub.1 .lambda./NA, (1)
where .lambda. is the wavelength (in .mu.m) of the light source used in the projection system and NA is the numerical aperture of the projection optics used. k.sub.1 is a factor describing how well a combined lithography system can utilize the theoretical resolution limit in practice and it can range from 0.8 down to 0.5 for standard exposure systems. R is the resolution value for the optical projection system. The highest resolution in optical lithography is currently achieved with deep ultra violet (DUV) steppers operating at 248 nm wavelengths but mid ultra violet (MUV) steppers with a wavelength of 356 nm are also in widespread use.
Manufacture of semiconductor devices is dependent upon the accurate replication of computer aided design (CAD) generated patterns onto the surface of device substrate. The replication process is typically performed using optical lithography followed by a variety of subtractive (etch) and additive (deposition) processes. Optical lithography patterning involves the illumination of a metallic coated quartz plate known as a photomask which contains a magnified image of the computer generated pattern etched into the metallic layer. This illuminated image is reduced in size and patterned into a photosensitive film on the device substrate.
Conventional photomasks consists of chromium patterns on a quartz plate, allowing light to pass wherever the chromium is removed from the mask. Light of a specific wavelength is projected through the mask onto the photoresist coated wafer, exposing the resist wherever hole patterns are placed on the mask. Exposing the resist to light of the appropriate wavelength causes modifications in the molecular structure of the resist polymers which allows developer to dissolve and remove the resist in the exposed areas. Negative resist systems allow only unexposed resist to be developed away. The photomask, when illuminated, can be pictured as an array of individual, infinitely small light sources which can be either turned on (points in clear areas) or turned off (points covered by chrome). If the amplitude of the electric field vector which describes the light radiated by these individual light sources is mapped across a cross section of the mask, a step function will be plotted reflecting the two possible states that each point on the mask can be found in (light on, light off).
These conventional photomasks are commonly referred to as chrome on glass (COG) binary masks, due to the binary nature of the image amplitude. The perfectly square step function exists only in the theoretical limit of the exact mask plane. At any distance away from the mask, such as in the wafer plane, diffraction effects will cause images to exhibit a finite image slope. At small dimensions, that is, when the size and spacing of the images to be printed are small relative to the .lambda./NA (NA being the numerical aperture of the exposure system), electric field vectors of adjacent images will interact and add constructively. The resulting light intensity curve between the features is not completely dark, but exhibits significant amounts of light intensity created by the interaction of adjacent features. The resolution of an exposure system is limited by the contrast of the projected image, that is the intensity difference between adjacent light and dark features. An increase in the light intensity in nominally dark regions will eventually cause adjacent features to print as one combined structure rather than discrete images. As a result of the interference and processing effects which occur during pattern transfer, images formed on the device substrate deviate from their ideal dimensions and shape as represented by the computer images. These deviations depend on the characteristics of the patterns as well as a variety of process conditions. Because these deviations can significantly effect the performance of the semiconductor device, many approaches have been pursued which focus on CAD compensation schemes which ensure a resultant ideal image, such as optical proximity correction (OPC) routines.
Nonetheless, the performance enhancement of advanced VLSI circuitry (that is, the speed enhancement versus dimension reduction of the circuits) is increasingly limited by the lack of pattern fidelity in a series of lithography and RIE processes at small dimensions (e.g., sub 0.5 .mu.m). In the photolithography process, a pattern is transferred from a photo mask to a photosensitive film (resist) on the wafer. In the RIE process, this pattern in the resist is transferred into a variety of films on the wafer substrate.
The quality with which small images can be replicated in lithography depends largely on the available process latitude; that is, the amount of allowable dose and focus variation that still results in correct image size. Phase shifted mask (PSM) lithography improves the lithographic process latitude or allows operation of a lower k.sub.1 value (see equation 1) by introducing a third parameter on the mask. The electric field vector, like any vector quantity, has a magnitude and direction, so in addition to turning the electric field amplitude on and off, it can be turned on with a 0.degree. phase or turned on with a 180.degree. phase. This phase variation is achieved in PSMs by modifying the length that a light beam travels through the mask material. By recessing the mask by the appropriate depth, light traversing the thinner portion of the mask and light traversing the thicker portion of the mask will be 180.degree. out of phase; that is, their electric field vectors will be of equal magnitude but point in exactly opposite directions so that any interaction between these light beams results in perfect cancellation. For more information on PSM, the reader is referred to "Phase-Shifting Mask Strategies: Isolated Dark Lines", Marc D. Levenson, Microlithography World, March/April 1992, pp. 6-12.
The limits of PSM lithography can be uniquely challenged by the manufacture of high-performance logic derivatives of advanced Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) technologies. These technologies are entering development cycles with immediate requirements for sub-quarter micron printed gate lengths and tight dimensional control on the gate structures across large chip areas. Since these logic technologies are based on shrinking the gate length in an established DRAM technology, the overall layout pitch remains constant for all critical mask levels, resulting in narrow, optically isolated lines on the scaled gate level. The requirement for tight line width control on narrow isolated lines drives the requirement of phase edge PSMs for these logic applications.
Phase edge PSM lithography makes use of contrast enhancement caused by a phase transition under an opaque feature on a mask. This phase transition is achieved by etching an appropriate depth into the quartz mask substrate on one side of a narrow line structure on the mask. Not all narrow line structures on the mask close upon themselves, some edges of the etched region will terminate in bare quartz regions. Since the 180.degree. phase transition forces a minimum in the image intensity, narrow dark lines will be printed by these excess phase edges. Currently, the unwanted images are erased using a trim mask, a second mask that transmits light only in regions left unexposed by the residual phase edge.
Even though resolution enhancement through the use of hard phase shifted masks (frequency doubling masks) has been extensively proven, implementation of this technique is critically dependent on computer assisted design (CAD) technology that can modify existing circuit designs to incorporate the additional design levels needed to build a phase shifted mask. Design modifications consist of defining regions on the mask that require phase shifting (i.e., by etching into the mask substrate) relative to the rest of the mask, and of designs added to eliminate lines printed by unwanted phase edges.
CAD based PSM design tools, such as the one described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,537,648, can be used to speed up the PSM design process to a point where it becomes feasible to convert entire chips to PSM designs based on specific graphical input rules. They cannot, however, guarantee that any arbitrary chip design will be able to be converted to a PSM design without phase violations.
A routine for design rule checking (DRC) of phase shifted mask (PSM) layouts is described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/733,584, filed Oct. 18, 1996, and concerns identification of designed structures for which a prior knowledge of non-phase shiftability exists. The problems that arises when applying design intensive PSM techniques such as alternating or phase edge PSM to large, complex and highly integrated circuit designs is that is that the only prior definitive check for phase shiftability, is the completion of a phase shift conversion using tools such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,537,648. Since it is appreciated in the field that no universal solution to the alternating or phase edge design problem exists, it becomes necessary to restrict the actions of chip designers by means of design rules to ensure phaseshiftable circuitry. Due to the complexity of the PSM design problem, fail safe design rules would be extremely restrictive and result in costly design density loss.
Therefore, prior to the present invention, there remained a need for a more desirable solution that would be a CAD-based phase shiftability checker that can be utilized by designers at various stages of the chip design process to verify the phase shiftability of their designs. Alternatively, such a tool would also be extremely valuable in the derivation of PSM design rules for a specific technology generation. The lack of an efficient, easy to use phase shiftability checker requires either a prior knowledge of shapes and layouts that will fail the PSM design, as it is very risky to assume that all circumstances that can cause PSM failures have been identified and have been correctly converted to conventional DRC inputs, or it forces the PSM design tool to be used as a design checker, which is time and labor intensive and will not broad acceptance in the design community.